MLS Assessment Types
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MLS Assessment Types
MLS Assessment Types
The MLS has 2 main assessment types: Reading Comprehension and Mathematics. All assessments begin with a practice section, which includes audio recordings of a welcome message, instructions, and question examples in the selected test language.
Additionally, we offer a separate vocabulary assessment for five languages: Chinese, English, Haitian Creole, Spanish, and Urdu.
Benefits of the MLS:
Assess Home Language Literacy: Reports provide information about multilingual students’ skills and abilities in their home language, as well as grade level placement.
Responsive Testing: Tests are semi-adaptive so students see questions relevant to their learning level.
Immediate Insights: Receive instant, detailed reports highlighting literacy strengths and areas to focus on during instruction.
Trans-adapted material: Test items are reviewed and adjusted by home language-speaking translators to ensure cultural relevance and clarity.
Languages and Assessment Types Available
A note on available assessment types
The graphic presented here shows the available languages for Reading Comprehension and Math assessments.
In order to be considered SIFE, newcomer students must perform two or more grade levels below age-appropriate grade in reading and/or math due to a possible interruption or inconsistency in education. Assessments were originally created with this in mind, starting at the 3rd grade level for Reading Comprehension and 2nd grade for Math.
🆕 In response to feedback from New York state educators, the MLS team has begun to incorporate early literacy skills into the reading comprehension assessments and has added grade 1 content to the math assessments. The graphic indicates which languages have been updated to include these earlier grade assessment portions.
🔍 See What's New with our Assessments for details.
Current languages include: Arabic, Bangla, Burmese, Chinese, Dari, English, French, Fulani, Haitian Creole, Maay-Maay, Nepali, Pashto, Russian, S'gaw Karen, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Ukrainian, and Urdu.
💡 The MLS team regularly develops assessments in new languages. Suggest a language you'd like us to consider via our Request a Language form.
What Do the Assessments Look Like?
What Do the Assessments Look Like?
How long does it take to complete an assessment?
All assessments are self-paced and the amount of time needed depends on the student’s performance and pacing. The tests are semi-adaptive, and once the student’s grade placement is determined, the test stops. Students who take the same assessment won’t necessarily see all the same questions, and may take different amounts of time to complete the tests.
🕖 Average time taken: 50 minutes
🕖 Estimated time duration: 30min - 2hrs
📖 Reading Comprehension Assessment
📖 Reading Comprehension Assessment
Developed based on curricula and standards of home countries Newcomers are primarily coming from.
Measures reading skills for grades 3-9 or k-9 (see above). Exemplars in English for each grade level are available on our MLS Sample Passages site.
Uses culturally-appropriate reading passages which are authentic, original texts written by native speakers and education experts.
Topics are age-appropriate and interesting for older students, even at lower grade levels.
💡 Passages and question types may differ by language in order to match home-country testing conventions.
📊 Student performance reports for updated tests align with New York State's Next Generation Learning Standards (NGLS).
The reading comprehension test has different passage types: literary, informational, functional, and persuasive.
Students answer Initial Understanding questions, which emphasize attention to key details; and Interpretation questions which emphasizing inferencing and higher level analysis skills.
Additionally, updated tests have questions that are are articulated in conjunction with NGLS standards; see the "What's new with our assessments" section below for more details.
Reading Comprehension Practice Passage (Chinese)
Reading Comprehension Passage, Question, and Answer Options (Chinese)
🧮 Math Assessment
🧮 Math Assessment
Aligned to the New York State Next Generation Learning standards (NGLS).
Measures math skills for grades 2-9 in all languages, 1-9 in updated languages.
Questions have only culturally-appropriate content and examples.
Trans-adapted* into all the languages.
🔍 Trans-adaptation involves home language-speaking translators reviewing and adjusting test items to ensure cultural relevance and clarity. Items may be modified if found culturally inappropriate, confusing, or misleading.
What skills are assessed?
NGLS Alignment: The MLS tests the skills emphasized by the NGLS for each U.S. grade.
Mathematical procedures e.g. addition, subtraction, multiplication, division
Mathematical literacy e.g. word problems and problem solving
📊 The student performance report shows how the student performs on procedural mathematics versus the mathematical literacy questions. Our 11 updated test reports also show alignment to the NGLS.
Multi-column Answer Choices
Number formats can differ across regions sharing the same standard language, such as Arabic. To accommodate this, both number formats are presented side by side on the MLS, allowing students to select the system they're most familiar with. Highlighting one answer automatically highlights its corresponding equivalent, ensuring clarity and ease of use.
Multi-column Math Assessment Example
🔤 Vocabulary Assessment
🔤 Vocabulary Assessment
Some newcomers come from areas with a history of testing vocabulary separately from reading comprehension. In Chinese, English, Haitian Creole, Spanish, and Urdu, there is a separate vocabulary test. For all other languages, questions about vocabulary in context are included in the Reading Comprehension assessment.
The vocabulary assessment measures students’ knowledge of synonyms, antonyms, compound words, multiple meaning words, and words in context, depending on the language. You will receive a student performance report outlining student's abilities in each specific skill type tested.
Vocabulary Assessment Example (Chinese)
Chinese Example
What's New with our Assessments?
What's New with our Assessments?
Student Computer Literacy Check
New and updated languages of the Reading Comprehension assessment have a computer literacy check to help determine if students have the necessary digital literacy skills to complete the computer-based exam. If students struggle with tasks such as clicking or have difficulty navigating the test at this point, then they will not be able to complete the test.
Some students may be unable to complete the computer literacy check for other reasons. If the student does not engage with the test after one minute, or cannot hear the audio, they will not be able to proceed with the test.
Updated Languages:
Reading Comprehension
Arabic, Dari, English, French, Pashto, Spanish, and Ukrainian
Updated Languages:
Math
Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, Dari, English, French, Haitian Creole, Pashto, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Ukrainian, and Urdu
Original Assessments: Students begin with a practice passage for paragraph reading.
Bangla Example
Updated Assessments: Students begin with a "computer literacy check" in which the student is asked to select the pencil to confirm ability to use a computer.
Arabic Example
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